As you know, we have been working our way through the book of Philippians, and in the last several sessions, we've been looking at this section I just read, Philippians 4, verses 10 through 20. This section, as you know, Paul discusses the gifts, the offering of money that the Philippian believers sent to him while he was in prison in Rome. And I'm going to refer to our passage this morning, but I want to kind of draw back a little bit and look at some of what the Bible says about the topic of giving. And so this message today doesn't really, it fits with what we've been talking about thematically, but it's not really, I don't really consider it to be one of the sessions in my series on Philippians on a better brand of happiness. But I do think it's important material. I've been looking for a way to insert it into one of these sessions, and I just haven't found a way where it really fits. So I decided to kind of pull it out and give it its own space and its own attention. And so this morning, I won't have any slides, but there are some notes in the Notes app. If you want to follow along and take some notes there, you can kind of see the structure of the message in the app there. I don't know about you, but I am not at all gifted when it comes to building or constructing things. I'm not gifted at it, I'm not good at it, and I don't like doing it, so I avoid it pretty much as much as possible. I have no idea how to build a table out of raw ingredients like wood and nails. I don't have the tools that would be required nor do I have the know-how to put such a thing together. But I can buy a table from Ikea or from some other store that sells pre-manufactured furniture, and if I follow the directions and all goes well, I can actually put something like that together. I am thankful that we live in a world where people have manufactured things and provided directions to put things together. Where someone like me who doesn't have the ability to conceive of a table and make a table out of scratch ingredients can still have a table because people have created one and designed one and provided directions to put it together. And I think that living in this world where so many things are given to us in step-by-step instructions, whether it's putting together a piece of furniture, or installing a piece of software on your computer, or putting together a recipe for a meal that you and your family can enjoy together. We live in a world where a lot of things are laid out for us in a step-by-step way. And I'm thankful for that. The Bible doesn't work like that. The Bible does not give us step-by-step directions for very much at all when it comes to our faith in Jesus Christ, or when it comes to what it means to follow the Lord Jesus Christ as his disciples. Now, that's not to say that the Bible is unclear about these things. The New Testament is very clear about how a person becomes a follower of Jesus Christ. It lays out over and over again in many of the books of the Bible how someone should turn from their sin and receive by grace through faith alone forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. But if you think about it, there's no book in the Bible that says, start here, Christianity 101. Here's how you become a believer, and goes kind of step by step through what that means. The Bible doesn't do that. It gives us God's will and it tells us how to become believers, but that information is spread out. And it's repeated over and over again throughout the books of the Bible. And really every part of the Christian life is like this. The Bible says much about what it means to be part of a local church. And it tells elders like myself and the other men who serve as the leaders of this church. It tells us certain things about how we should handle matters like discipline or what the Sunday morning service should look like. But there's no one book in the Bible that says, here is the manual for elders, and here's what you do point by point through everything. Instead, what we have to do is we have to read and study God's word as it was given to the people of God. And we have to, as we study God's word, we have to put some things together across the books of the Bible. We call this theology. Theology is often, It's often spoken against by some people, by some believers. But theology and the ability to do theology is extremely important if you're going to be a consistent and faithful follower of Jesus Christ, and if you're going to be a leader of the people of God. And when it comes to the theology of giving, We have to go to many different passages of scripture to construct what the Bible teaches about giving. The Bible is very clear about how ministry should be funded. But it takes looking at many different passages of scripture and comparing them together in order for us to understand the full picture of what God's word says about how ministry should be funded. And here in the book of Philippians, Paul wrote the book of Philippians, not only to encourage and to teach the church at Philippi, but specifically to thank them for a financial donation that they made to his ministry. And we've been seeing that as we've walked through this passage. In verse 10 of Philippians chapter 4 verse 10, Paul says, I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. And then in verse 14 he says, yet it was good of you to share in my troubles. Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving except you only." And so these words, these verses tell us that Paul is talking about how his ministry was funded, how it was provided for by the Philippians. And yet Paul never gives a step-by-step manual for how the Philippians gave, describing what they did, nor telling them or us how to do it. It's not like an Ikea table where the instructions are carefully laid out for you one at a time. And so one of the things that we need to do if we're going to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ, and if we're going to be a church that is obedient to what God's word teaches, One of the things we have to do is to look across the span of God's revelation in the Old and New Testaments and ask how God's work was funded. Now, you know it as well as I do, everyone knows that in order to live and survive in this world, you need some kind of material support. I suppose a person could make a sort of a subsistence farm and grow their own food and provide for themselves. I think it's possible for human beings to do that. But if you want to participate in a community and if you want to participate in the economy in some way, there needs to be a way of earning money and using money to provide for yourself. And every family, needs to figure out a way to get income to provide for itself. Every organization needs a way to figure out how to get income to provide for itself. And in our world, where there are so many people doing nonprofit work, there are so many charities out there that are constantly sending us stuff in the mail, asking for donations, or calling us on the phone, asking us to send in donations. We might wonder as followers of Jesus Christ what God has to say about this in the context of his ministry. What does God's word say about the funding of his ministry in the world? That's really the question that I'm getting at. It's the one that Paul alludes to in this passage of scripture. But again, we have to turn to other passages of scripture to find the answer. And so the question that we're entertaining here is how was ministry funded in the Bible? And the first thing I want us to see is this, that ministry was funded in the Bible by believers. Ministry was funded by believers in the New Testament. And I'm gonna take you through some different New Testament passages that show you consistently throughout the New Testament that God funded his ministry through the giving of believers. We begin with the ministry of Jesus. And this is something that even though we have four Gospels that give us a very full and very detailed account of the life of Jesus Christ, there's no passage in the Gospels that talk about Jesus asking for donations. or really telling us in specifics how Jesus went about funding his needs. Now you know, as well as I do, that Jesus at times, because he was God and because he had miraculous power, had the ability to create whatever he needed in the moment. When he was out preaching and there were thousands of people there who didn't have food, Jesus had the ability to take somebody's lunch and multiply it to provide for everyone. And so someone might think, well, maybe Jesus lived by miraculous means, but that's not true. That's not true at all. Jesus, in fact, only did miracles to teach people something about himself, to authenticate his ministry and his message. The truth of the matter is Jesus' ministry was funded by believers. Specifically, the Bible tells us that his ministry was funded by women who traveled along with him. We saw this when we were studying the gospel according to Luke. But I want to come back to it again and look at it in Luke chapter 8, verses 1 through 3. The scripture says, after this, Jesus traveled around from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. And so if you've ever read the Gospels, you know this. Jesus did his ministry by traveling from town to town. Luke begins this summary by telling us that again. And then he says this, the 12 were with him. And so we know that he chose 12 men to become his apprentices who would later be sent out as the apostles. And so they were traveling with him. And then the verse goes on and says this, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases. And so as Christ went about, he helped people. He cured people who were ill, who had diseases, who had deformities, and who had demons. Some of these people joined his entourage, and they became part of the group that traveled with him from town to town and village to village. Luke records all this in general, now he gives us the name of some of these women. He says, Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had come out. Joanna, the wife of Chusa, the manager of Herod's household, Susanna, and many others. And then it says this, in Luke chapter eight, verse three. These women were helping to support them, that is Jesus and the disciples, out of their own means. When Jesus traveled from one village to the next, where did he find a place to sleep? Where did the disciples find a place to sleep? Where did they find their next meal in a world where there were no restaurants? The answer is these women would go into the city And they would find places for the disciples and Jesus to sleep, and they would make sure that someone there would provide them with meals for what they needed. And these women, when necessary, would pay out of their own pockets for Jesus to have and the disciples to have a place to stay and food to eat. And so Jesus was able to give his full time to teaching and preaching the gospel message, to healing, and casting out demons, because faithful followers of his, believers of his, funded his ministry. They did the legwork that was necessary so that he had what he needed, and they took money out of their own pockets to make sure that the things that needed to be paid for were paid for. And this took not only the need to spend time finding these things, but also just the concern about them off of the minds of Christ and the disciples. Because these women faithfully served the Lord in this way, they were able to give their full focus and their full concentration to the preaching of the gospel. Now, Jesus lived a very simple lifestyle, a very Spartan lifestyle. He didn't travel around with a truck full of belongings. He lived a very simple lifestyle with merely the clothes on his back and the shoes on his feet. But even so, it was still necessary for him and for the disciples to have food and to have a place to stay. Moreover, the Bible tells us, and again, we don't see this directly in the Gospels, we find out about it later, but the Bible tells us that not only did the 12 disciples travel with Jesus, but actually they had wives and children. And these also traveled along with Jesus. Paul alludes to this in 1 Corinthians 9, verse 5. He talks about how Peter took his wife with him everywhere he went. Of course he did, right? The New Testament doesn't talk about this a lot, other than this passage in 1 Corinthians, because it isn't relevant to the message. But the point is that we think of Jesus and the disciples, but the truth is there were a large group of people, including the families of the disciples, who traveled with Jesus. And these disciples, because they were traveling with Jesus, they weren't out fishing in the Sea of Galilee. They weren't out farming. They weren't out collecting taxes, in the case of Matthew, who was a tax collector. They left behind their normal means of making a living to give their lives full time to the gospel. So how did they live? The answer is, other believers, these women specifically, paid for their needs and provided for them. So ministry was funded by believers in the New Testament, even with Jesus. Believers in him funded his work. The Bible goes on and tells us that following the example then that Christ set, that secondly, not only was Jesus' ministry funded by some women who traveled with him, but in fact the early church was funded by its believers. Now the early church didn't have buildings like this building that we're meeting in this morning. They didn't have to build and maintain a building such as this, nor did they have utility bills or insurance or other things that equipment costs that cost so much for ministries today. Yet the New Testament affirmed early and often, even though they had a lot fewer expenses, the New Testament affirmed early and often the principle that godly Christian leaders should be financially supported by believers in Jesus Christ. Let's consider a few of these principles and passages that show how the early church funded the work of the ministry. First of all, the Bible tells us that believers in Christ funded missions by providing financially for those spreading the gospel. That's what Paul's alluding to again here in Philippians chapter four. He's talking about how the Philippians sent him money over and over again for the spread of the gospel. But there are other passages that indicate this as well. 1 Corinthians chapter 9, verses 11 through 14. By the way, 1 Corinthians chapter 9 comes as close as any passage in scripture to giving like a detailed theology of how giving happens. And so we could actually spend a lot of time looking at that passage, but I'll just dip into part of it. 1 Corinthians 9, 11 through 14 says, if we have sown spiritual seed among you, that is God's word, the teaching of scripture. Paul says, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? The question is, we've poured God's word into your lives. Is it wrong for us to expect financial support from you in response? But he goes on in 1 Corinthians chapter 9. and says, if others have this right of support from you, shouldn't we have it all the more? In other words, the Corinthians were giving to others who were preaching the gospel, but Paul said, hey, I started your church, and God sent me forth to be the apostle to the Gentiles. Don't I deserve your financial support? But then he continues and says, but we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ. Don't you know that those who work in the temple get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? So Paul calls back to the Old Testament, and I actually could have done a whole session on that, how giving supported the work of the Old Testament ministry. But Paul alludes to that here and says, people brought sacrifices to the temple. Don't you realize that some of the food that the priests enjoyed and some of the material and financial benefit that the priests had came from those offerings people brought? And then Paul says this at the end of 1 Corinthians 9, verse 14, he says, in the same way the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel. How was missions funded? It was funded by the people of God. And although Paul did not want to go in and ask unbelievers or new believers that he was trying to reach for financial support, he did expect that believers who were established in the faith and growing, he did expect that they would financially support his ministry. And so believers in Christ funded missions in the New Testament. As Paul went out to frontier areas to preach the gospel message, he needed believers who were already established to keep funding his work in order to keep going forward. But also the Bible tells us that local churches that had elders, they were also supported by the giving. of the local church believers. Believers in Christ not only paid for the funding of missions, but they also paid for the ministry of their elders. Believers in Christ paid for the ministry of their elders. Galatians chapter 6 verses 6 and 7 says this, anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor. And if you looked at this verse in more context, you would see that Paul is referring here to financial things when he says all good things. He's saying if you've received teaching, you should pay your teachers. And then he says this, and you're familiar with this verse, Galatians 6, 7. Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. And then he says, whoever sows to the flesh will, of the flesh, reap corruption. Whoever sows to the Spirit will reap life everlasting. This all comes in the context of supporting the elders of the church financially. Also in 1 Timothy chapter 5, verses 17 through 18, the scripture says this, the elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. For the scripture says, do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain, and the worker deserves his wages. As Paul was teaching the churches about how they should be funded, he was saying, you should give to the elders and teachers who lead your church. And so the scriptures, the Old Testament, which we haven't really gotten into, and the New Testament, have a long and consistent track record of teaching across both testaments that the people of God fund the work of God through their giving. They pay for the ministry that they receive. So how was New Testament ministry funded? It was funded by believers. That's the first principle. The second principle I want to look at is this, is that believers funded ministry, but how? They funded it through the local church. Believers didn't go out and indiscriminately give to whoever they felt like. The Bible teaches that the giving of God's people should be channeled through the local church. And the reason for this, the main reason for this is that the church is God's creation for doing His will in the world. Now look, beyond local churches like ours, there are other people doing very good ministry. We fund some of them on the campus of the University of Michigan. or missions agencies that take special attention in watching over the world missions and taking care of the funds of the missionaries. There are all kinds of what are called para-church ministries in the world, and they're doing good work. I am not at all saying para-church ministries are unimportant. But what I am saying is this, Jesus didn't found any para-church ministries. Jesus founded the local church. In Matthew 16, 18, Jesus said this, on this rock, that's Peter and the disciples, on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. What is God's vehicle? for preaching the gospel and discipling believers and doing his will in the world in this age, the answer to that is the local church. And while other ministries may have important areas of ministry and important ways of serving God, only the church has the promise of Jesus Christ, that it will stand the test of time, that it will stand over the attacks and against the attacks of the devil. It is the local church that God has established to preach the gospel and send forth missionaries and disciple believers and to do His will in this world. And while it's not wrong to fund things, it is wrong if we look to anything other than the local church. to be the leader and the primary means by which God does his will in the world. In Matthew 16, 18, which I just quoted, Jesus promised to build the church. He promised to defend the church. He promised to protect the church. And he promised that the church would prevail over the attacks of Satan in this world. And although this promise refers to the universal church, all believers everywhere around the world, not necessarily any one local church, God's will in the universal church is accomplished through local assemblies like ours. And therefore, this is why God designated the church to be the way, the channel, the vehicle through which His work is funded. And we see this in the New Testament. In the New Testament, all giving was channeled through the local church. Since the church is the thing God created to do his work and work his will in this world, it's not surprising that funding ministry in the New Testament was handled by the church. In the following passage that I'm going to read in a moment in 1 Corinthians 16, Paul commands the church to collect offerings for the suffering church in Jerusalem and have it ready when he comes. They were to collect this offering on Sunday. He talks about the first day of the week in this passage I'm about to read. They were to collect this money on Sunday and then have it ready to give to Paul when he arrived. In 1 Corinthians 16, verses one and two, the scripture says, now about the collection for the Lord's people. Do what I told the Galatian churches to do on the first day of every week, that's Sunday. Each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income. Saving it up so that when I come, no collection will have to be made. Paul didn't want 100 or 200 or 1,000 individual donors sending him money. He said, you as a church, band together, you give your funds to the church, the church collects the money, and the church distributes the money. Now why was this so important to the Apostle Paul? It's because God is the one who has instituted the local church to do his will in this world. And other passages of Scripture that I'm not going to read, but you could look them up if you'd like to, in Acts chapter 4, verses 34 and 35, and 1 Timothy chapter 5, verses 3 and 16. show that actually not only was God's ministry funded, like elders and missionaries and so forth were funded through the church, but actually benevolence was funded through the local church too. Widows who could not support themselves financially and were financially destitute were supported by the local church. And that ministry, that money was funded through and channeled through the local church. And so the Bible tells us that Principle one, God's work is supposed to be funded by believers in Christ, and two, that money should be channeled through the local church. Now, when you give to our church, when you support the ministry here at Calvary Bible Church, when you fund your ministry through Calvary Bible Church, we as a church can take those funds and we can create a greater relationship with whatever groups or individuals we support. We have a greater relationship of accountability and service to and with the ministries that we fund. Think about it this way, if each person in our church chose his or her own ministry, their own missionary to support and to give to that missionary work, Ministry would get supported, but it would be supported just tiny little bits at a time. But when we pool our money together as a church, not only because God commands it, but because it makes sense to do it, we create a new relationship with the missionary. So the missionary doesn't have to individually communicate with hundreds of different people. Instead, he can communicate with us, the local church. And also, we have the relationship of accountability. So if that missionary sins or wanders into error... We can watch over these things and keep an eye on their ministry. If mission work is funded by hundreds of thousands of Christians, losing one giver is not a problem, and basically the missionary can do almost whatever he wants. But if a missionary is funded by a few churches giving large sums of money, that person, that missionary, has a much greater ministry connection to the people funding his ministry, and the church has the ability to speak to him about how he is using his time or how faithfully he's holding on to Christian doctrine. And so not only is it biblically right for you to channel your giving through the local church, but it's wise to do so because of the greater relationship of accountability. Now, why is this important? Why is it important that the people of God fund the ministry of God and fund it through the local church? Well, there are a bunch of reasons. But one of the biggest reasons that the Bible gives for why the people of God should be faithfully giving to the work of God is that giving is like a compass. It points to the direction of your heart. Not only giving, but the way you use money in any way shows the direction of your heart. Jesus clearly and explicitly said this. that a person's spending reveals what's important to that person. In Matthew chapter six, verses 19 through 21 and verse 24, Jesus says, do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Jesus was constantly, and not constantly, but very often, a repeated emphasis of his teaching ministry was against materialism. And one of the ways he said you guard against materialism is by being generous with the financial resources you have. when you and I as believers make it a priority in our lives to fund the work of God. It helps to keep us from being distracted by all the material things in this world, and in so doing, set our hearts on things below instead of on things above. But when you and I make it a priority to give to the work of God, then it refocuses our mind on what God is doing in this world. We care about the health of this local church, the outreach of this local church. We care about the places where we send missionaries to reach people with the gospel message. The truth of the matter is, and the Bible teaches this, that one of the ways to gauge your spiritual health is by looking at where your money goes. And if none of your money goes into God's work, you have to ask yourself, how important is my walk with God to my life? How important is God to my life? Is money an idol in your life? Well, one way to look at that is to look at how your finances are stewarded. Again in Matthew chapter six, this time verse 33, Jesus said, but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. The idea of seeking first his kingdom in this context means many things, but one of the things it means is to give to God's work. It is the local church and the spread of missions that are reaching people for the kingdom of God. And if you're gonna be someone who is seeking the kingdom of God and you're longing for the day in which Christ will establish his kingdom on earth, you will want to fund the spread of the gospel message through this church and through other churches that we start here and around the world. Just as a compass points to the north, unfailingly, So a person's spending points to what's important to that person. If you save all your money and maybe only give a token to God's work, it indicates that you love money or material things more than you love God's work. If you spend all your money on recreation and on possessions for yourself, it shows that you love yourself more than you love God and his work. But if as part of your discipleship, because obviously, like all aspects of discipleship, it takes time. It takes time to learn. It takes faith to prioritize giving. If over the course of your life as a Christian, you learn to trust God and give generously to his work and live frugally so that God is glorified in your life as you fund ministry, then you're spending through giving shows how much God means to your life and how much His work is important to you. One reason why God commands us to give if we're His followers is not only so that His ministry will get funded, but so that your heart will be purified and the materialism And the idolatry of money that comes so naturally to us will be purged away as we learn to prioritize the work of God in this world. So all of this is background to what Paul tells the Philippians in this passage. Paul was encouraged by the gifts that the Philippians sent because it showed that this message was sinking into their hearts and their lives, that they really believed that the money they gave to, that they collected as a church and then gave to Paul. was doing something important of eternal meaning and eternal significance. And my question for us as a church is, is that true for us too? If we looked at our giving as a church, if we looked at the individuals and families who make up this church family, would we see that God's kingdom is important to us based on how we give? Or would we see that the kingdom of God is a lower priority based on the little that we give and how much we spend on other things? How was ministry funded in the Bible? It was funded by believers through the local church for the glory of God in order to change us and focus us on what's eternally important. And so my challenge to us is to consider where our money goes. Are we giving faithfully to the work of the Lord? And if we are, could we do more? Has your giving, if your financial strength has increased, has your giving increased proportionately as well? As your walk with God has grown, has your faith in God grown to where maybe you're giving even a larger percentage? of your giving than before. Giving is like a compass. It points to what's important in your life. And from time to time, it's helpful for us to stop and think about our priorities and look at where our money goes and make sure that our love for Jesus Christ shows itself in the tangible support of God's work. This is how ministry is funded in the Bible. But as Paul indicates here in this passage of scripture in Philippians, it's actually more important for you and for me as disciples of Jesus than it is for what the church receives. Notice again in the passage of scripture that we've been studying. In verse 17, Paul says, not that I desire your gifts. What I desire is that more be credited to your account. What the Philippians gave Paul meant a lot to him. It helped his ministry very much. But he was more concerned about how it reflected their spiritual growth and what it would cause them to receive in eternity because of their faith in Jesus Christ. And so as believers in Christ, we should be giving. We should be giving faithfully. We should be giving generously. We should be giving in proportion and growing in our giving as our financial strength grows, and more importantly, as our faith in Jesus Christ grows. This is how ministry is funded in the Bible.